Supposed to be much lower power and much better use of boost states to stay at higher frequencies longer. Would love to see benchmarks against a i3-3225 in a few games and general use applications. Do not need a whole review, just enough to see if Richland accomplished what AMD claimed and is worth the price premium they are looking for.Reply

Not really. Until there is proof that Richland is anything more than thunder to spoil the Haswell launch, to me its just a good marketing ploy. The hardware support for gestures is its biggest news story so it could grab more of the mobile laptop market. If they missed the Kaveri launch i could see being upset...but Haswell is a much bigger fish to fry.Reply

+1I was very much expecting a desktop Richland review for the HTPC space given: 1) the recent Haswell for HTPC piece and how expensive Haswell is 2) Richland desktop has launched, I'd have imagined it'd be a worthy piece of news.Instead I see Haswell for 1440p?!!! seriously?!Reply

Yeah, I don't see why we can't continue with Haswell until we get through all of the related new hardware for it. Anandtech will get to Richland and report the facts about it in due time.

I'd rather see them do a thorough job on one platform, then switch to the other and do a thorough job with it, than try to swap back and forth in their testing labs just to make AMD users happy (or if they had done Richland first, Intel users).Reply

It is not dead. There was a Gigabyte board in the video that had two ports. The problem is weak Windows support for it. I think we should expect to see it in Windows 8.1/ or .2 tablet configurations for docking in the future. USB 3 is okay, but gaming just doesn't happen on it. Only good for 2D.Reply

I picked up a new Intel (Haswell) Core i7-4770K. I am looking for a Thunderbolt equipped motherboard to finish the build. My basic preferences are Intel NIC (dual NIC is prefered. No Realtek, Killer, etc. NICs.), FireWire, and at least one Thunderbolt port (dual is preferred). This is what I have found so far:

Intel DZ87KLT-75KPros: Dual Intel NICs, FireWire, (single) Thunderbolt, and Intel reliability. Many of the first Haswell "overclocking" reviews were conducted using this board. I can get the same discount on this board as I did on the CPU.Cons: I need to get confirmation regarding whether the on-board Lucid (VirtuMVP?) solution allows a discrete graphics card (dGPU) to utilize the Thunderbolt port (Intel integrated graphics through Thunderbolt as an only option is a non-starter). This item is the part of the last Intel motherboard series before their board division is absorbed elsewhere. Popularity of this motherboard is still too early to gauge but I prefer widely bought items because of the community's ability to address issues and provide unsupported enhancements.

Asus Z87-Deluxe/DualPros: Dual Thunderbolt. It’s the top-of-the-line Asus mainstream motherboard so chances are that a community of owners will form on one of the forums.Cons: No FireWire support. Dual NIC but one is Realtek (the other is Intel). I don’t need or want WiFi, Bluetooth, or NFC but I’m certain they can be disabled in the BIOS even though I’m still paying for them. There is no mention of Lucid VirtuMVP support in the specifications so I, again, wonder if the integrated Thunderbolt ports will display dGPU output instead of iGPU-only.

Asus Z87-ExpertPros: (Single) Thunderbolt. Asus brand.Cons: No FireWire support. Single NIC. I don’t need or want WiFi, Bluetooth, or NFC. There is no mention of Lucid VirtuMVP support.

Asus ROG motherboardsPros: ASUS brand.Cons: No FireWire support. All are single NIC. All of these have a TB_HEADER port if/when Asus releases their ThunderboltEX add-on card, we’ll get Thunderbolt support. People have been waiting for almost a year for this add-on card to be released for Asus Z77 and H77 boards. Rumor has it that there were problems with validation. Whether those problems are technical or political (aka profit-related) is up to anyone’s interpretation.

Gigabyte Z87X-UD7 TH & Z87X-UD5 THPros: Both the Z87X-UD7 TH and Z87X-UD5 TH have dual Thunderbolt.Cons: No FireWire support. Both have a single Intel NIC. The wireless features are unneeded. dGPU Thunderbolt support hasn’t been clarified. The biggest issue is that neither is available at the moment.

ASRock Z87 Extreme9/acPros: Dual Thunderbolt. Dual Intel NIC.Cons: No FireWire support. I need a rock-solid performer and ASRock, like any other brand, has its detractors. The problem is those detractors are mostly in my circle of tech friends so I’m hesitant to give it a try. The wireless options are useless to me. I can’t find it for immediate purchase anywhere.

Supermicro C7Z87-OCEPros: Supermicro reliability. Dual Intel NIC (with support for teaming!). Single Thunderbolt. FireWire. Supermicro support has confirmed this board supports CPU and memory overclocking. It also works with Intel XTU (Extreme Tuning Utility). It feels like they used Intel's reference design above. Supermicro also has a Xeon E3-1200v3 series board that looks just like this with Thunderbolt support.Cons: Lucid VirtuMVP support isn't mentioned. Availability is an issue.

EVGAI received an email yesterdat that EVGA has no plans on releasing a Thunderbolt-equipped Z87 motherboard but they could offer one in the future.

As this point, no motherboard on this list is perfect.

Quite frankly, I'm not sure why. Blaming poor Windows support is fine but it has to start somewhere. Could this be a perfect example of both the chicken and the egg problem in tech AND the fact that Apple's Thunderbolt push has failed to inspire the tech world to produce products? Either way, I'm stuck. At this point I'm leaning towards the Intel motherboard but if I give up Thunderbolt then there are a lot more options that I can buy today.Reply

As someone who is considering building a new system this Summer using a Haswell processor and an Asus ROG board, I have a couple of questions:

1) Back in April it was widely reported that there is a bug on the 8-series chipsets that causes USB 3.0 devices to fail when the system wakes up from some of the sleep modes. Intel released information that a new stepping of the chipset would be necessary to fix the problem. Since then I haven't heard any more news about it. Did Intel release the new stepping in time for launch, or is the first batch of motherboards shipping with this bug? And if so, when are they supposed to start shipping with the new chipset revision?

2) Having checked out a few online retailers such as NewEgg, Amazon, etc. today, it seems the Asus mainstream and TUF series are already available for purchase at this time, however the ROG series are not available yet. When is availability of these boards expected in the retail channels, specificaly the Maximus VI Formula?Reply

Expecting early adopters to live with this bug is really not acceptable. For people who regularly use hibernate mode instead of shutting down, this is a real show-stopper. They should have delayed the launch until the updated chipsets were ready, and eaten the loss of recalling the defective parts.Reply

I actually like the gold. Red clashes with blue cases and blue lights. Gold and black can go with just about anything. If it were up to me, I'd utilize some more gray, or even try WHITE PCB with black slots. Why? Because it looks great under a UV light, or with color cathodes/LEDs.Reply

Finally someone who likes gold. But I wish there were other gold themed components like RAM heat spreaders, coolers etc. to go with it, because a slight imbalance in the color theme will ruin the whole thing.Perhaps a Golden Cooler Master Cosmos III, or am I asking too much??Reply

I've always been an Asus man. Always. However, I'm shallow. I don't use the RoG boards because I'm not into red. Their blue deluxe boards were always perfect for me. Again, I'm shallow, their must also be form with my function.

As much as I like wearing gold, these boards are garish. I went Gigabyte, let alone any other manufacturer besides Asus, for the first time....well, ever. I'll be first to admit it was all over the color.

I love ITX. Can't wait to rock LAN parties with such a tiny box. What I want to see on ITX boards:

High quality audio. Single gigabit NIC is fine. 4 USB ports is fine too, I still have no use for USB3.0. Overclocking is pointless to me considering the power in today's CPUs, but it's a fine feature for those who want it. It was fun and made sense on Athlon, but today it doesn't really get me much more performance.

Longevity is great, considering that I won't be upgrading nearly as often (I made the jump from Opteron 185 OC'd - equal to a low end Core 2 Duo up to a Core i5 IVB and never really missed much). I'd love to start seeing seven year warranties. For a high quality ITX board with a great warranty I would spend $200. For a typical ATX board I won't spend more than around $100.

It's good to see things like PS/2 ports finally being dropped off motherboards more and more. Those are so archaic they have cavemen laughing. I posted this in the Gigabyte preview: "Orange and neon green are fine, but obviously won't meet everyone's tastes. What we need are options. Make PCI-E and memory headers customizable/swappable. It's one more thing to sell us, and it gives us options. Try adding a bit of LED accent lighting to the board, just to give it a cool factor. Let users push a button to switch between colors. :)"Reply

use usb sound cards for itx ... or just use the optical sound and get a receiver ... The sound quality will be determined by the Reciever you choose when you use optical out , not the card. all optical out give the same signal regardless of which sound card is being used. the sound card/onboard sound changes the digital to analoge, but if you dont change to analoge from the sound card , and use the optical/digital out , the qualit of the reciever you buy is the important.

JJ - can you please produce a hierarchy / venn diagram of the various ASUS Z87 boards on the market?

I always want to buy / recommend ASUS motherboards, as I believe you put a lot of thought into them, but then I end up going with other vendors after getting lost in your confusing product lineup :-/Reply

Thoroughly disappointing. I looked these boards over on NewEgg, and the I/O area just looks mostly empty, with so few USB ports, while there are tons of headers at the bottom of the board. The slot layouts don't make much sense, either. I'm really disappointed with these new boards, even if I was interested in getting one of those boring Haswell chips. I'm disappointed in the processor. I'm disappointed in the chipset features. I'm disappointed with the performance. This is going to be another decade, or maybe even more, where we will get no technological advancement, like the early P4 days. Intel sucks.Reply

Also out of sync for me, and I recommend the use of some softer materials in the recording room since the sound becomes ugly like this.

Also waiting for Richland benchmarks, Haswell kinda seems more like a notebook thing, those desktop Haswell chips show only power consumption improvements and barely any performance gains, not interesting for me.Reply

I am still waiting for the ThunderboltEX card for my P8Z77-v Deluxe - Totally feel like I was baited and switched because of this. I would never have bought this motherboard if they had not said it would be available. Total BS. LOVE ASUS, but the way they have handled the ThunderboltEX is AWFUL!!!Reply

OMG his voice drives me crazy. Its so monotone and he is extremely difficult to listen to. He needs to simplify his vocabulary a bit. He can easily say a lot of the same things using much simpler wording. /endofrant

Gold looks so tacky it's not even funny. Let's hope Asus gets their sense back and returns to the trustworthy, awesome blue. Next thing you know they'll go insane like Razer and make everything glow green.Reply